Sterling silver at the table

The sterling standard

Sterling silver is 92.5% pure silver, which is why it's often stamped 925. The standard goes back to 1300, when a law under King Edward I said silver had to be of sterling standard and marked with a leopard's head.

More marks followed over the centuries:

• 1363: a maker's mark became required alongside the leopard's head.
• 1478: the date letter was introduced. It changed every year.
• 1544: the lion passant, a walking lion, began to appear in the hallmark.

Canada has its own rules. To carry a silver quality mark here, a piece must contain at least 925 parts of pure silver in every 1,000. It can be marked "sterling," "ster.," "STG," "silver," "sterling silver," "argent" or ".925."

Forks and the place setting

Spoons have been around since prehistoric times. Forks are much newer at the table. In 1004, the Greek niece of the Byzantine emperor used a golden fork at her wedding feast in Venice, where she married the doge's son. A few centuries later, forks were common in Italy.

In 1608, the English traveller Thomas Coryate toured Europe. His account of the trip, published in 1611, described people eating with forks. In France, King Louis XIV decreed in 1669 that knives brought to the table should have a ground-down point. By the 1850s, forks were well established in the United States.

A tool for every food

For wealthy American families in the Victorian era, fine silver was a key part of dining. They had special pieces for almost everything: egg spoons, oyster forks, grape scissors, asparagus tongs, salt spoons, marrow spoons, melon knives and berry spoons. One dinner service made by Tiffany & Co. for the MacKay family in the 1870s ran to about 1,250 pieces.

Silver was also reaching more homes. In England, silverware was increasingly made for the middle-class market by industrial methods, in set patterns. Makers turned out ordinary dinner services and tea sets alongside grand pieces.

Tea arrives, and silver follows

Europeans first came across tea in the first half of the 1600s, along with spices, silk and lacquer from Asia. In Britain, tea first appeared in the 1650s as a novelty in London's coffee houses.

It became fashionable after King Charles II married the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza in 1662. She brought the tea-drinking habits of Portugal to the royal court. The East India Company placed its first order for tea in 1664. High taxes kept tea a drink for the wealthy for much of the 1700s.

That 1670 teapot was presented to a committee of the East India Company by George, Lord Berkeley. Silver teapots were still rare at the time. By the late 1600s, pear-shaped teapots had become a standard feature of English silver, and they stayed the main shape until the late 1720s.

For those who could afford it, makers produced whole tea and coffee services, richly decorated in the Rococo or Neoclassical styles. In the 1800s, tea took another turn. Anna Maria Russell, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, is credited with inventing afternoon tea around 1840.

Silver plate changes everything

In Birmingham, England, the firm of George Richards Elkington found a way to coat everyday objects with silver using electricity. The idea was patented in 1840 and perfected for franchising by 1842. A thin skin of silver could be laid over all kinds of base-metal objects, which made mass-produced silver plate possible at very low cost.

The favourite metal underneath was nickel silver. Despite the name, nickel silver contains no silver at all. It's a mix of copper, nickel and zinc that just looks silvery. Once an electroplating works opened in Birmingham in 1844, nickel silver turned out to be an ideal base. That's where the stamp EPNS comes from: Electro Plated Nickel Silver.

Electroplate, along with materials like ceramics and glass, gave buyers far more choice and widened the market for tea wares.

How to tell plate from sterling

The quickest clue is the stamp. Here's what to look for:

A stamp is a strong hint, but it isn't proof. The Assay Office in London warns that a "925" mark on its own doesn't guarantee a piece is silver. It could come from another country or be stamped by a maker without independent testing. Our guide on how to read gold and silver stamps goes into more detail.

The souvenir spoon craze

Souvenir spoons first appeared in Europe in the mid-1800s and came to America with returning tourists. The first American souvenir spoon was made in 1889 by Galt Bros. & Co. of Washington, DC, to mark 100 years since George Washington became president. In 1891, the firm of jeweller Daniel Low produced a spoon inspired by the witch lore of Salem, Massachusetts.

Then the craze took off. At the end of 1890, only a handful of American designs existed. About half a year later, hundreds of patterns were being made. By the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, the golden age of souvenir spoons was well underway. Interest faded by the First World War.

Canadian jewellers made them too. Henry Birks opened his first store on St. James Street in Montreal on March 1, 1879, and the company became Henry Birks & Sons in 1893. The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies holds a Birks sterling souvenir spoon with a coiled handle ending in a snowshoe and a picture of Notre-Dame in Montreal.

Silverware today

According to the Silver Institute, world demand for silverware fell 21% in 2025, to a four-year low. Most of the drop came from India, where much higher prices weighed on spending.

Whatever the market does, knowing what the stamps mean is the first step to knowing what you have.

Questions people ask